‘Black Boy’ by Richard Wright The first 24 years of my life were spent in the south—that is, the southern part of the United States: Arkansas. In our household of nine, we always had one black servant. We called her the maid, but she really was the “jill of all…
BY TONY BOUZA I was in my 20s during the McCarthy years—roughly the early ’50s. Communist hysteria. Traitors everywhere and a reckless and audacious national figure attacked such supreme patriots as George G. Marshall (of the Plan) and the architect of not just World War II victories, but World War…
BY ED FELIEN There is nothing more dangerous than a cornered rat. It is desperate. It will do anything to survive. Donald Trump knows that when he leaves office there is an almost endless trail of criminal charges he will face. He will pardon his fellow felons: Manafort and Flynn…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Dinkytown, as you know, is not like other neighborhoods. It’s not even like other college campus-adjacent neighborhoods such as those in St. Paul, or in smaller college towns. So Dinkytown’s response to things like the COVID pandemic is also a little bit different. Dinkytown, with its…
To the City Council Public Health and Safety Committee on “the current model of community safety and opportunities for change:” There are some very simple things this council, working with the mayor, could do to improve the efficiency and restore public confidence in the Minneapolis Police Department. First, return to…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Although there have been few major disruptions to businesses and organizations along 42nd Street due to either COVID-19 or civil unrest, nowhere has been immune. Business models, hours and other things have changed, and there’s often not the additional capacity to keep the public informed. Southside…
BY TONY BOUZA On my birthday, The New York Times’ lead editorial centered on police impunity and labeled arbitrators as the villains. Quite a gift. Thank you. The Times are idiots. Union problems got so bad here that they (city leaders) undertook a desperate nationwide search for a chief in…
The choice between peace and mutually assured destruction There it was—the article reminding us of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and who better to write it than Helen Caldicott, pediatrician, founder of the Physicians for Social Responsibility and Nobel Peace Prize winner. It’s been 75 years since the…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Midtown Global Market’s vendors are having a tough 2020 for the most part. Like most food halls, food courts and dine-in restaurants, the whole market shut down in March. But that was just the beginning. By the start of April, a few eating and drinking establishments,…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE It’s a complex landscape. You have the institutions—district public schools, public-private charter schools, alternative, private and parochial schools, as well as the districts themselves and some contractors that fill in essential services, like food preparation or bus transportation. Then you have the stakeholders—students, families, teachers, other…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN At 38th and Chicago, where George Floyd was killed on May 25, the streets are blocked off so traffic can’t go through the intersection. Inside this space are many flowers, murals, a medic tent, daily community meals, a library, food giveaways and a group called Agape (unconditional…
BY TONY BOUZA The writer has a unique series of responsibilities. The first is to truth. Relevance and humility follow. Gratitude and respect for the reader, and I’m sure there are more. Facile, no? No. If our President has reminded us of nothing else, he has reminded us of the…
On the eve of the six-year anniversary of Cargill’s pledging to stop clearing forests, 30 Mighty Earth activists gathered at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which houses a Cargill gallery, to commemorate the commitment and sign an oversized renewal-of-vows contract. The document contained an empty line at the bottom for…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN During the 1990s, my friend Marie was the director of a shelter for homeless women and children sponsored by a small Christian denomination. I visited her once at the shelter and I could see that she gave her whole heart to her work. She smiled at residents…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The western origin point of Selby Avenue in St. Paul is only three blocks west of the river, but the avenue doesn’t start to get interesting until it crosses Fairview (going east) with a tricky-to-maneuver dogleg. It rambles on straightly eastward to Cathedral Hill and…
